1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a data processing system and method for publishing a privileged communication message in relation to accessing a computer-stored confidential attorney-client communication that is privileged from being discovered during litigation.
2. Related Art
The attorney-client privilege (AC privilege) dates back to the sixteenth century and is the oldest confidential privilege. It is an evidentiary privilege which protects a confidential communication between attorney and client and serves to encourage open, candid, and full communication between attorney and client. This serves the administration of justice by enabling an attorney to give legal advice based on knowledge of all of the facts that prompted the client to seek legal counsel. On the other hand the AC privilege may result in a suppression of otherwise admissible evidence, thereby hindering the administration of justice by thwarting the fact-finding process. Accordingly, courts have articulated situations in which the AC privilege does not apply or is waived.
Waiver of the AC privilege may occur if the confidential communication has been accessed by a third party not authorized to have such access, especially if the attorney and/or the client have not taken adequate security measures to protect the confidentiality of the communication. For example, if the client reveals confidential information to the attorney at a dinner table in a public restaurant, and the conversation is overheard by a stranger sitting at an adjacent table in the restaurant, the client has most likely waived the AC privilege for the overheard conversation. If there has been a waiver, the conversation would be discoverable during pre-trial litigation and admissible as evidence at trial. On the other hand, if the client reveals confidential information to the attorney in the privacy of the attorney's office with the office door closed, and an electrician opens the door and unpermissively walks into the lawyer's office to repair a light fixture, it is debatable whether the attorney took adequate security measures to protect the AC privilege for the words of the conversation heard by the electrician. A court might decide that, even though the electrician had not intended to hear words of the conversation, the attorney should have taken some precautionary measures to deter a third person (i.e., the electrician) from walking into his office while the confidential conversation was in progress.
For reasons of economy and efficiency of communication with clients, it may be desirable for an attorney to have a computerized database system, such as a distributed-node server system, in which the attorney communicates with the clients via files in the database. Since some of such communications may be confidential, the AC privilege for such communications could be waived if, due to a breach in security, a third party gains unauthorized access to such confidential communications even if such access was not intended by the third party. The third party may be, inter alia, a client other than the intended client or one who is a stranger to the lawyer. A method and system is needed to deter an unauthorized third party from accessing such confidential communications stored in the database.